and then you just reload again
by Digital-Dragon-Master
Summary: She is dead, but he has one thing to remember her by, one thing that can help him pretend she's still fighting by his side. Post-"Abandon All Hope..." Dean /Jo  character study


A/N: I'm extremely new to the Supernatural world, having started watching last December and gotten through most of the show just this past summer. Well, I have an unnatural love for Jo and for the Good Ship Dean/Jo in general, so I decided to write this as soon as I watched the end of season five.

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><p>They don't have bodies to burn. Dean supposes, in a sick way, their bodies are already burned, so they don't need to, but still, it doesn't feel <em>right<em> not to give the Harvelles a hunter's funeral, because they were true hunters, right to the end. So they burn the picture. The last thing to remember them by Dean places in the fire, and he and Sam and Bobby watch as their faces melt away, standing in the shadows of just twenty-four hours earlier, in a time where this room was _not_ a mourning center. (Well, no more than before anyway, no more than usual.)

They stand there long after the photograph dissolves into ashes, crackling and melting in the steady fire, warming the house but not those in it. Dean doesn't know who leaves first, but he knows he leaves last. Vaguely he acknowledges Bobby's wary stares, Sam's pained, piercing gaze, but since neither say anything he overall ignores them; even if they had spoken, he would probably _still_ ignore them.

All for nothing. As he approaches the Impala, dutifully waiting for him, the spot where a red truck had occupied just a day before now vacant, these words echoed in his head. What had Carthage gotten them? Not the end of the apocalypse, that's for sure. Not the death of Lucifer, not a lead on how to _kill_ Lucifer, and not even preventing Death from rising. All that has changed is Jo and Ellen are dead, another two bodies because of him. Two more lost _family members_ because of him.

And now? Now he has nothing left except his memories of them, constantly tainted each time he remembers that this is _it_, because Ellen would never yell at him and tell him to take care, Jo would never spin a knife or tease him, he would never-

Well. It's all over now. And though he tells himself that it's no use dwelling on what cannot and will never be, that's all he _can_ do, and he wishes to- to whoever, God if he's listening, Cas seems to still think he is for whatever reason, that he'd never met Ellen and Jo, because maybe then they would be alive. The life of a hunter's hard, yeah, but they wouldn't have gone on that stupid suicide mission and Jo wouldn't have gotten ripped up by that damn hellhound.

Before he can lose himself in memories of the explosion, the heat, last words, her lips, a mother's declaration, that pale face, pained screams, and barking - endless, endless barking that still haunts his nightmares (oh it will so much more now, won't it) - he sees it in the backseat, picked up hastily and discarded after Cas teleported them away from the battlefield, dropped in the car as they hurried away from the dead city.

It's a shotgun. Not any shotgun, but _her_ shotgun. Dean hadn't even realized he'd grabbed it in the midst of everything.

He's got nothing but his memories, so he'd thought.

Except now he has this, this little piece of Jo left. He opens up the car and picks it up, taking it inside with him.

If there's one memento Jo wouldn't yell at him for keeping by him all the time, he supposes this would have to be it, wouldn't it?

Dean's not sentimental. (At least that's what he tells himself still, because if he lets it start he probably would never stop.)

He's not sentimental, but if, by any chance, he was, he would wonder if the rifle smelled like her. It's a silly thought that he does not have, even for a moment; it smells like rock-salt and gunpowder, after all, and blood. Of course it smells like blood.

While shooting at demons, he never takes conscious note of it, but in private, during a quiet moment - or rather a drifting moment - he runs his fingers over the rifle, aiming at nothing and wondering if he's imagining the grooves of her fingers and their lingering heat, forever worn into the weapon from overuse.

(He is.)

He's going crazy. He's going crazy in that damn asylum and he knows that everyone is dead because of him, surprised he hasn't started seeing her in the mental patients or the mirrors or hear her dying words in his ear. He already does when he sleeps, so why not now too?

When they finally get out, after the confrontations and the lack of confidence and the knowledge that they're broken at the forefront of their minds, Dean takes special note of the rifle in the trunk and runs his fingers over it before they start driving again.

Maybe he'll get his wish. Maybe he and Sam will never be born and their parents will live and so will everyone else who got involved with these cursed brothers.

Except it's too late, because Mary's already pregnant with him and if that's the case then Sam has to be born too; it'd be a crime if Dean got to live and Sam didn't.

As he tries to protect his mother and father from Anna- his old friend (again someone who will die because of interacting with him, again someone who he has failed), he finds himself wishing he had the rifle in his hands; every now and then it's like she's beside him as he fires it, and as his brother almost bleeds to death and Michael stands in his father's skin, burning Anna alive, he knows more than ever that he needs someone- _anyone_- standing with him.

Everything's wrong. Everything. People are going crazy. No one can help. He's empty. He. Is. Empty. He screams and cries and yells for help, for this person who Cas still believes in and who is their last hope, trying to drown out his brother's screams added to the endless cacophony of victims, trembling hands finding her rifle when all is said and done and he can't go back inside.

"They went after Bobby. Not like usual, but they _went after Bobby_. That damned Death. He- dammit, he brought back his _wife_. We had to _shoot people_ who shoulda just stayed dead and not been dug up for all this-"

Sometimes he just talks, polishing it. Sam enters and he stops, but while his brother never says anything, Dean suspects he knows.

When they search Heaven, they don't see either Ellen or Jo.

It's a bit stupid. He wanted to give the rifle back to her, but he's sort of glad he couldn't; he doesn't know if he'd be strong enough to return it, even if he could've taken it with him.

"I'm sorry."

He's in the Impala, away from the last of his family and toward his destiny, and it's in the backseat again.

"I can't do it anymore. I give up. I won't let anyone else die for me."

A little bump jostles it, which he can tell due to the shifting behind him. It makes his voice break when he speaks.

"Sorry, Jo. You really did die for nothing after all."

Lisa may be a safe, happy family, but Jo...

Well, all he does now is dwell on opportunities lost. A family, he keeps thinking, would've been really nice.

But he doesn't have Lisa and he can't have Jo and all he does have is this smoking memory of a future he (they) could have had, each and every bullet fired another broken dream.

(He holds it close and pretends he's just keeping it safe for her.)

Even Cas. Even Adam.

"To hell with all this," he growls in an undertone, and as he tells Sam that he will fight Dean imagines Jo's snort and an annoyed _about time_.

He adds Gabriel to the ever-growing list. For a moment it gets harder to keep fighting, and then he fires off another shot.

Between Crowley the damn demon and Sam's secret hell buddy Brady, it's a long day. The hellhounds make it longer and for the first time in awhile Dean feels the true drive to **hunt**. _Let's get these damn bastards,_ he imagines in his ear, staring down the invisible demon dogs as he fires round after round, the shots from that day two months ago reverberating as well.

In the end, Crowley kills the hounds, but he still thinks she'd be happy knowing he at least got off a few shots at them, right?

They almost die (again). Pestilence almost kills them, and though it's likely futile he still takes aim as he lies on the ground, coughing up blood and dizzy but still holding tight, as he can't lose this too.

He can't lose anyone else. (Even though he knows in the bottom of his heart he's going to.)

(He can't even sacrifice himself right. Instead Adam, that poor boy who he never even really knew, has to take his place, but he already promised he wouldn't, he knows, he knows, just give him this moment to hate himself, okay? He'll stop before it's time to go back into the fight, Jo, so don't make him yet.)

In the end, he is broken still, but he has dinner with Lisa and Ben and it's like a family for a moment or two or three. He smiles and says he's alright even though he isn't (never will be), because _I'm here, Sammy, I'm here,_ and that peaceful look and that's all he lives for but maybe he has to find something else to live for, for Sammy, for Sammy, for everyone he's failed.

And though this is the life he has chosen now, he keeps Jo's rifle. He presses it to his forehead and lets the cool metal relax his muscles in his relapses and memories and the symphonies of painful screams carrying over from his dreams. He presses it to his forehead, thinks of times past, thinks of the smiles and the laughs, of his brother and his father and his mother and his surrogate family and the family he could have had and all of those who have fallen and before he can get to the part where he should have fallen with them, he pulls away and just stares at his last memento, breathing in the rock-salt and the gunpowder and yes, the blood, placing a kiss against its barrel and polishing away the guilt before it can well up again.

And he stands and keeps going.


End file.
